Studies at WPI and many other institutions have identified a common set of faults running through the first two years of science and engineering education: students see introductory mathematics and science courses as having little apparent relation to one another or to their professional goals, skills essential to academia and to the workplace--communication, problem solving, working in groups, information gathering and synthesis--are not consciously nurtured. Individual disciplines at WPI have begun to address these shortcomings through peer-assisted cooperative learning, academic success training tied to individual courses, open-ended group projects within courses, and integration of computational and instructional technology in courses. This initiative will create connections among these successful individual efforts and produce a unique interdisciplinary approach to mathematics, science and engineering education. Cross-disciplinary connections will be established via bridge projects that encourage students to carry basic concepts across disciplinary boundaries. The program will rely on WPI's well-developed community of interdisciplinary undergraduate Peer Learning Assistants. Although WPI's innovative project-oriented curriculum gives our faculty a special motivation for this undertaking, the outcomes of this work will be widely applicable because they will be built upon a familiar foundation, the usual discipline-based introductory courses. A fabric of enhancements and additions that provide educational and intellectual unity among existing courses can be woven thread by thread without the risk or expense of a wholesale re-fashioning of curricula and courses.
